Justin Raimondo is taking
Labor Day off. Behind the Headlines will return Wednesday, September
8

September 3, 1999

CLINTON'S
WAR ON THE AMERICAN PEOPLE

"The
day will come when 'Remember Waco' will become a battle cry for
the people."

So
wrote someone whose moniker is "Deadeye," posting a message
on the Internet bulletin board Freerepublic.com, the wildly popular
cyber-headquarters of the populist right-wing. And he was far from
alone in his sentiments. "Eskimo" chimed in with "there
are many who believe that the criminal elements that now operate
the federal government intended Waco to be an object lesson and
a direct indication that they are ready and willing to use force
to realize their oligarchic dreams." Yesterday, "Eskimo"
would have been considered a marginal "extremist"; today,
as the ugly truth about Waco begins to emerge, this analysis is
hard to dispute.

DEPLOYED
AND PULLING TRIGGERS

For
six years the feds have denied that incendiary devices were
fired that could have resulted in the Waco conflagration.
Their line has always been that the followers of David Koresh
committed mass suicide. Now comes new evidence that not only
were "pyrotechnic" devices utilized in the assault,
but the top secret Army unit known as "Delta Force"
were in the front lines of the battle  and not as mere
"advisors," as the Justice Department is now claiming.
As Mike McNulty, producer of the film "Waco:
Rules of Engagement," puts it, they were "deployed
and pulling triggers."

THE
SHOCKING TRUTH

McNulty's
film, nominated for an Academy Award, showed how the victims
of Waco were set up and incinerated. Now, in "Waco: New
Revelations," McNulty comes forward with the rest of
the shocking truth: While government officials claim that
the "pyrotechnic" gas canisters the government now
admits were found at the scene could not have caused the fire,
McNulty reveals that "what they aren't talking about
is the pyrotechnic devices that were found at the points of
origins of the fire in the rubble of the building after the
fire." What about "the other types of 40-millimeter
munitions that were also found in the aftermath of the fire
that were definitely 'pyrotechnic'  and possibly more
than that"?

THE
STAKES ARE HIGH

The
administration is terrified of the answer to this question,
but the truth is coming out faster than the even the champion
liars in the White House and the Justice Department can deny
it. On October 18, a case pursued by the survivors of the
massacre and their relatives is scheduled to go to trial in
federal court in Waco; U.S. District Court Judge Walter Smith
has moved to take control of all evidence, resisting the Justice
Department's attempt to grab the reins of the investigation.
With different sectors of the Establishment battling for control
of the evidence, the high stakes were vividly dramatized when
Reno sent US federal marshals storming into the FBI's Washington
headquarters, impounding tape recordings of FBI commanders'
communications with field agents on the day of the massacre.

A
CRISIS OF LEGITIMACY

What
is at stake is nothing less than the legitimacy of the American
state. For if it turns out that McNulty is right, and the
feds  not only the FBI but Reno and the President himself
 covered up the wanton murder of over 80 people, including
25 children, then the moral and political legitimacy of this
government has come to an end. Having launched a war against
their own people, our rulers have broken the social contract
 and lose their right to rule.

ON
TARGET

"Deadeye"
was dead on target: "Remember Waco" is the battle
cry of millions of radicalized Americans, outraged by Clinton's
secret war against the American people  and their numbers
are growing with each new revelation. If this is "extremism,"
then let the apologists for mass murder make the most of it
 while they still can.

A
LESSON LEARNED

American
conservatives are learning a lesson the Left long ago forgot
 these dedicated patriots are coming to appreciate the
horrific criminality of which their government is capable.
Indeed, during the past eight years, they have seen that the
US government seems capable of little else. During the reign
of this most warlike of American Presidents, US armed forces
have launched military operations against enemies all over
the globe  with not even the American people exempt
from their war-maddened bloodlust.

IN
PERSPECTIVE

But
just to put things in perspective: imagine ten-thousand Wacos,
envision bombers instead of helicopter gunships, and think
of the tens of thousands of children fallen victim to the
US assault on Iraq instead of the 25 murdered at Waco.

DEMONOLOGY

Another
analogy to Iraq: The demonization of Koresh followed the classic
lines of the propaganda campaign that equated Saddam with
Hitler. Milosevic was similarly caricatured, along with Noriega
and the ruler of every other "rogue nation" that
dared defy Washington's edicts. Just as these wars were fought
with the American media cheerleading the fight on behalf of
the administration, so the war at home requires the same sort
of media complacency, and even complicity.

THE
SMEAR ARTISTS

We
weren't supposed to talk about the Waco massacre: for the
longest time, after the bombing of the Oklahoma City federal
building, the subject was verboten, a sure sign that
whoever raised it was a dangerous right-wing "extremist,:
a militia member who might follow in the footsteps of Timothy
McVeigh: the preferred epithet was "antigovernment extremist,"
as the professional smear-mongers invariably phrased it, employing
their favorite tactic of manipulating the language to suit
their own ends. For if we accept the unacknowledged premise
of that neat little phrase  that any and all opposition
to government is "extremist" in nature  then
all opposition is effectively criminalized. Waging a war on
"hate speech" and "hate groups" whose
major crime seemed to be their hatred of government,
a whole platoon of "extremist"-watchers grew up
into a veritable mini-industry, the most active and certainly
the wealthiest being the Southern
Poverty Law Center, founded by Morris Dees.

INFORMANTS

Mr.
Dees, about whom
I have written before, is the Grand Inquisitor of the
well-funded and well-connected "hate the Right"
movement. His Center raises millions each year under the pretenses
of fighting "hate"  when it is hate that seems
to motivate Dees, a deep and abiding hatred of rightist dissent,
or, indeed, of any radical protest against the political
and economic status quo. As an organization, the SPLC has
functioned as a virtual arm of the State, especially its growing
"anti-terrorist" apparatus, acting as an informant,
a chronicler, and a clearinghouse for information to be placed
at the disposal of federal agencies. In their capacity as
a kind of privatized Thought Police, Dees and his associates
are called on by the liberal media whenever they want to discredit
and smear the right-wing populist opposition. Naturally, these
"experts" were brought in to yesterday's front page
story in the New York Times, "Tenacity
of 2 Played a Role In reviving Inquiry on Waco,"
by Jim Yardley.

A
FAMILIAR IDIOM

While
the facts are roughly if vaguely presented, the tone of Yardley's
piece is enough to convey the paper's editorial disdain for
its subjects. It starts in the first very short paragraph,
in which the author describes the six year quest by McNulty
and lawyer David Hardy to uncover the truth as "obsessive."
Yardley goes on to frame the issue in the familiar idiom of
the "extremist'-baiters: "Espousing views popular
with many right-wing groups," he continues, "Mr.
McNulty, in particular, has blamed federal agents for the
deaths" of the 80-plus victims of the FBI-Delta Force
assault. But the critics of the government's role in the Waco
incident are not limited to the right side of the political
spectrum; and besides, all the reviews of "Rules of Engagement"
emphasized quite the opposite  that these were a bunch
of liberal-to-leftie filmmakers. McNulty's documentary
made a big hit at the Sundance Film Festival, not exactly
a hotbed of right-wing ideology.

SOUR
GRAPES

Yet
we are still treated to the same tired old smear tactics that
haven't worked in the past and won't work this time, with
Yardley hauling out the malevolent Mark Potok, of the SPLC,
who laments that "this is really unfortunate. This has
given credence to the rest of McNulty's views, which are unsupported."
But which views? And what, exactly, is "really
unfortunate"  that McNulty has been proven right,
or that the government's lies are being exposed? In Potok's
case, I suspect that the answer is both.

HAUL
OUT THE "EXPERTS"

Not
content with one "expert" with a political axe to
grind, Yardley cites yet another professional "expert
on right-wing extremism," one Mark Pitcavage, described
as "a historian who specializes in right-wing extremist
groups and operates the Militia
Watchdog Web site. "The Waco documentary was highly
publicized," he avers, "but the inaccuracies were
not. I don't think the McNulty Waco documentary could even
remotely be considered objective." It is absolutely amazing
that this man should be cited in this article as some kind
of scholar of "far right extremism," and the maintainer
of a website, when he in fact is an employee of the FBI: here,
from his website, is some biographical material, not mentioned
in the Yardley piece:

MARK
PITCAVAGE  SCHOLAR, HISTORIAN, AND GOVERNMENT STOOGE

"The
creator and maintainer of the Militia Watchdog website is
Mark Pitcavage. Mark Pitcavage is a historian living in Columbus,
Ohio, who specializes in the history of right-wing extremism
in contemporary America. He is currently Director of the SLATT
Program Research Center. The SLATT Program (State/Local Anti-Terrorism
Training Program) is a Justice Department program designed
to educate senior state and local law enforcement officials
on domestic terrorism issues. It is conducted jointly by the
Federal Bureau of Investigation and the Institute for Intergovernmental
Research, a nonprofit organization. Pitcavage has provided
training to a number of law enforcement agencies and other
groups, including the Federal Bureau of Investigation."

THE
JIM YARDLEY SCHOOL OF JOURNALISM

Yardley
cites Pitcavage as an "objective source," who is
given a platform to denounce McNulty as a dangerous subversive,
without telling his readers about his links to the government
 and the very agency implicated in the killings and
the cover-up. This tells us everything we need to know about
the kind of journalism they practice over at the New York
Times.

DUH!

But
what does it say about the intelligence of a journalist who
gives the skeptical reader a key clue in debunking his own
thesis? For anyone with a computer and a connection
to the Internet could check up on Pitcavage's bona fides and
find them wanting. Simply by taking a few minutes of Web-surfing
to confirm his worst suspicions, a child could debunk this
fatuous ploy  and so why do they expect the American
people to believe it? Is it any wonder that "mainstream"
journalists are losing their credibility, and people are turning
to the "alternative" media on the Internet to find
out what is going on the world?

ULTERIOR
MOTIVES

The
grand finale of Yardley's article is another choice quote
from Pitcavage, the FBI agent masquerading as a distinguished
"scholar": "They [McNulty and Hardy] deserve
a little bit of credit. But you wish that someone else had
discovered this stuff instead. These guys have ulterior motives."
Naturally, a government agent posing as an oh-so-objective
academic couldn't possibly have any ulterior motives.

WHY
IS THAT?

And
why didn't anybody else discover "this stuff"?
Could it be because no one in the "mainstream" media
thought to question the official government line? Is it remotely
possible that the pundits and alleged "reporters"
in the major media centers could have cared less that a bunch
of "extremist" Christian fundamentalists had been
slaughtered like animals  what were they doing with
that kooky Koresh, anyway? Didn't they really deserve
to die?

CALL
OUT THE TROOPS

And
I suppose it is "conspiracism" of the worst sort
 the major crime cited by the professional "watchdogs"
such as Dees, Pitcavage, and freelance extremist-baiter Chip
Berlet  to speculate that it won't be long before the
troops are called out again. I think I hear war-drums beating
in the distance  and they seem to be getting closer
by the day. Iraq is about due for another major bombing, and
the Transcaucus is incubating a "refugee crisis"
that may very well require "humanitarian" intervention
 and there's always China, provoked into a fury by US
patronage of Taiwanese separatists. Any one of these could
explode at a moment's notice, and divert attention away from
the fact that murderers walk among us  and not only
walk among us, but rule over us.

A
SLOGAN FOR THE FUTURE

But
perhaps, this time, not even the spectacle of war will divert
the national attention from the unfolding horror  perhaps
it will only underscore the criminality of our ruling elites.
No more Wacos  US Out of Iraq: now there's a
slogan for the antiwar movement of the not-so-distant future.

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